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Lemon Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with lemons, sugar, cream, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Ice Cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the rind of the lemons on the lumps of loaf sugar.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a bowl with the sugar.

  3. Add the powdered sugar and cream, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  2. For Italian ice cream, add a glass of brandy before freezing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Supply the rind oils and juice that give the ice cream its bright, sharp flavor.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the base and absorbs lemon oil from the rind, carrying its aroma.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the cream, adding sweetness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen ice cream rich and creamy rather than icy.

The step that matters

Rub the rind on the loaf sugar. Lemon oil is held in the peel, and sugar pulled across the rind lifts it out. Rubbing too lightly loses the aroma, which the sugar then carries into the base.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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